On the west side of Lake Como, across the lake from Bellagio, there’s a café that’s a little slice of heaven. It’s in between Tremezzo and Cadenabbia. The seating area, perched on a stony ledge on the side of the lake, seats about 20 people under a canopy of green foliage. Sadly, it’s our last day in Bellagio. This is a nice place to plan out our next move, because tomorrow we’ll hit the road.
This café is a great spot for customers, but I have sympathy for the waitress. To get here, she has to come from the main building, which is on the other side of a fairly busy two-lane road.
We had stopped here for a quick beverage after visiting Villa Carlotta, but we stayed for quite a while because we were enjoying the music. It was being piped in through speakers that must have been hidden somewhere.
Name a Song!
We heard a mix of retro American classics from the 40’s and 50’s, Italian songs, and Italian versions of American oldies. So much fun to listen to. Who would ever think of creating a play-list like that? I was about to find out.
Before leaving to go back to Bellagio, I crossed the road to use the facilities in the main building. The owner of the place was there. He spoke english, so I told him how much we enjoyed listening to the music he’d been playing. Well, that really got him excited.
He was a music guy. Totally into it. All kinds of music. If you could bottle this guy’s enthusiasm, you’d have something special. He told me, (in some detail), about his custom internet hook-up. On this set-up, he could play literally any song recorded by any artist in any language from any era and from any place in the world.
He practically begged me to put him to the test. “Name a song! Name a song by anyone! Any era! Thirties, forties, seventies, nineties… I play it for you!” He was a real character. Too bad we hadn’t found this place sooner. It would have been fun to come back here at night.
Punta Spartivento
We said “ciao” to the owner and our waitress and walked to the ferry dock at Cadenabbia. From there we took the ferry across the lake back to Bellagio. We weren’t ready to go back to the room, so we decided to walk out to where the town comes to a point, Punta Spartivento. (Point of the Dividing Wind).
Lake Como is shaped like an upside-down “Y.” Bellagio is located at the junction. When we look towards the north from Punta Spartivento, we’re looking at Switzerland and the southern end of the Swiss Alps.
On our way to the point, we checked to make sure our car was still where we parked it. We hadn’t seen it in three days. Who knows? Maybe I’d parked in a tow-away zone. Sure enough – there it was, safe and sound.
Ah… Gelato
By the time we reached Punta Spartivento, it had turned into a beautiful, warm day. It seemed like everyone but us was walking around, eating gelato. It looked so good. Had to have some. It WAS good. The little shop selling gelato did a good business that afternoon, that’s for sure.
Bellagio is a great little walking town. You could probably walk the whole town, going up one street and down the other, in an hour. It’s on the side of a mountain, though. If you do take that particular walk, your legs are gonna know it
We ate our gelatos and walked out to the point. We could look across the lake and see Varenna. That’s where we caught the train for our day-trip to Milan, (remember?) We moseyed back to the hotel, where we had time to lounge around for a while before going out to dinner.
It had been a nice, easy day. But even on easy days, we always seem to do a lot of walking. I guess that’s just the way it is. We need a way to burn off those pasta carbs, anyway, eh?
And Speaking of Pasta…
When dinnertime rolled around we made the 2-minute walk to a restaurant we’d been hoping to dine at. We had tried to get a table there the other night, but they were booked solid, and we didn’t have a reservation. We didn’t have a reservation tonight, either. Our plan was to get there when they opened and hope for the best.
So far, so good. We got there just before they opened. It was on the second floor, so we walked up the stairs to the main entrance. We were met by a big, serious-looking guy wearing a black suit and tie.
I could see at this point that entering by force wouldn’t be our best option for getting in. I’d have to employ some other tool from my bag-of-getting-into-restaurants tricks. “Begging” comes to mind.
I told him in my best italian that we didn’t have a reservation, but we were hoping he could find a table for us anyway. He took a step to the side to look through his big, black reservation book, scowling as he flipped through the pages. Hmmmm… He seemed to be mulling it over. He looked at his book. Then he looked at us. Then back at the big reservation book. Boy, he sure scowled a lot.
To be continued…
